Critical fashion and social justice

Fashion is a phenomenon thriving on social injustice, and where there are few social differences it produces them, harvesting its energy from the frictions of social competition. The course will explore topics from the technologies of the self and cultural identity, global production and consumption, body size and regimes of asceticism, aesthetic apartheid and politics of the dressed body. Specifically the course will juxtapose the struggles of social justice with the injustices amplified by fashion to draw parallels and find new tactics for empowerment through fashion, that is, how fashion can mitigate injustice and produce engagement and craft capabilities, or in other words, making people fashion-able.